A Rollicking Collection of True Tales from the Founding Editor of the Huffington Post
With zinging wit and zero propriety, one of media's most successful executives bares all in hilarious literary debut
“Frank, fearless, and very funny.”
– Arianna Huffington
If David Sedaris, Chelsea Handler, Larry David, and Caitlin Moran had the unlikeliest orgy in history, the resulting love child might one day write a book like Roy Sekoff’s debut, Lacks Self-Control: True Stories I Waited Until My Parents Died to Tell.
Taking its title from Sekoff’s kindergarten teacher’s strikingly prophetic report card proclamation ('Although he is generally agreeable, Roy lacks self-control'), this summer’s release of Lacks Self-Control marks the arrival of a collection of stories that 99% of the population would be too reticent, embarrassed -- or, let’s face it, polite -- to write down, let alone share with the world. Which is, of course, precisely the point.
Caroming between Sekoff’s Miami childhood, overstimulated adolescence, and A-list adjacent adulthood, Lacks Self-Control is a rambunctious, rollicking, occasionally raunchy read. Roy Sekoff -- founding editor of the Huffington Post and cocreator of HuffPost Live -- is stepping back into the spotlight with the release of Lacks Self-Control.
After a career spent dancing to the rhythms of the 24/7 news cycle, Sekoff walked away from his high-profile, high-paying, completely secure job as second-in-command at HuffPost to rest, relax, and spend more time with his family -- and decided to at last fulfill his first-grade teacher’s prophecy: “Roy enjoys creative writing and should be encouraged to do so more often.”
From a teenage pilgrimage to a Times Square porn superstore to life-changing experiences with high colonics and psychic readings to his deep catalogue of close encounters of the celebrity kind, Lacks Self-Control chronicles Sekoff’s unwavering commitment to overshare.
“The idea of leaving a job to ‘spend more time with your family’ has become a standard punchline -- but in my case, it was actually true. Little did I know that as my always-revved inner motor slowly downshifted, my unconscious would intervene, repeatedly forcing me out of bed in the middle of the night, mind racing with ideas and recollections of stories I wanted to tell,” he continues.
“I soon realized that if I ever hoped to get a decent night’s sleep again, I was going to have to get these stories out of my head and onto paper. ‘Lacks Self-Control’ is the result.”
"It's for those who appreciate wit and candor, don’t blush easily, see life as both fundamentally absurd and a glorious gift, and can find humor amid the wave of humiliations, great and small, that life inevitably sends our way,” Sekoff adds.
A lively, irreverent raconteur whose sharp observations wring laughs out of an often-ludicrous yet relatable life, Lacks Self-Control will hit the shelves June 2018.